


It's Confusing

by emilyshee



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Earl Harlan is a good friend, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-23
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-10 03:01:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2008431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emilyshee/pseuds/emilyshee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After hearing himself mentioned on Cecil's show, Earl invites Cecil out to dinner to feel him out on the status of his relationship with Carlos and what exactly he wants from Earl.  Earl doesn't get the answers he was hoping for, but their talk leads to a personal revelation about what exactly Earl is doing back in Night Vale.</p><p>Edited To Add:  This was outlined and started right after Capital Campaign, but looks like it's still canon compliant after The Retirement of Pamela Winchell</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Earl waited nervously as the phone rang in his ear.

"Hello?" said an unforgettable voice.

"Hi, Cecil, this is Earl Harlan," he said, "I got your number from Old Woman Josie.  We caught your show today down at the restaurant and my boss asked me to call and thank you for giving us a plug on the air."

"Well, you can tell him he's very welcome," said Cecil, "I'm always happy to give my support to local businesses."

"I can help you get a reservation, if you want," Earl said, "We're booked solid for the next few weeks, but I can put your name down first when we start having tables available again, and give you a call if there's any cancellations.

"That would be great!  I'd really appreciate it."

"Sure, it's no problem.  Although,...do you mind if I ask why you're looking for a table for one?"

"Oh, right, you weren't around for this.  Well, see, I have this boyfriend now, Carlos?  He's a brilliant scientist!  Anyway, there was this corporation called Strexcorp that was trying to take over Night Vale, and we had to have this revolution thing to get the town back, and he was helping new Mayor Dana Cardinal and her masked army in this other desert world that was connected to Night Vale through these old oak doors and - it's kind of a long story.  The point is that Carlos has been trapped in this other place for a couple of weeks and I'm sort of on my own for now."

"No, I knew about that - small town gossip, you know?  What I meant was, you have lots of friends in this town.  Just because your boyfriend's - not around, doesn't mean you should have to eat _alone_."

"Oh.  Well, that's a bit complicated.  I mean, Dana's busy getting ready for her inauguration and Josie's trying to rebuild the Opera House and - to tell you the truth, I'm getting a bit tired of the looks of sympathy."

_What did that mean?_

"We could go out some time, to catch up," Earl suggested, his voice carefully casual, "It's been years since we really talked."

"Well, just as friends, right?"

"Of course just as friends," Earl said quickly.

"Then catching up sounds great, actually!  I'd love to."

"Good.  I have Friday night off from _Tourniquet._ Maybe we could meet at _Cafe Ennui_ after your show?"

"It's a plan!"

"Right.  See you then."

Earl put the phone down and wondered what he was doing.

 

* * *

 

It was a nice evening, so they sat outside at the patio tables.  Cecil suggested that they share a bottle of wine, which was fine with Earl.  He had never liked wine, but figured he'd better get used to it since the ban on wheat by-products had gotten rid of all the beer.  And whiskey.  And several varieties of vodka and gin.  Well, technically most beer was made with barley, not wheat - but the Sheriff's Secret Police had had trouble figuring out which varieties were supposed to be illegal and which were not, so they'd just blanket-banned it and required would-be vendors to apply for exemptions by proving that their stock was wheat-free.  So far Teddy Williams was the only one who'd survived the application process, and Earl hated the bowling alley's light beer.  So he sat there trying to develop a taste for fermented grapes.  Cecil seemed to have managed it already - or maybe he had always been a wine lover even before the ban had limited his options.  By the time they had reached drinking age, Cecil and Earl hadn't been close enough for Earl to know his habits anymore.  The reminder made Earl sad. 

But he was also happy to be sitting here, now, enjoying a meal with Cecil.  And hopeful, because even though Cecil still claimed to be committed to his absent boyfriend, he hadn't sounded particularly emotional talking about him on the radio, and Earl hoped that was a sign that Cecil was getting ready to move on.  And guilty, because he was lying to Cecil about his intentions and secretly wishing for the failure of his relationship.  Before the pride and terror of the Eternal Scouts ceremony, Earl had always felt one thing at a time, strong and pure.  Now he wondered if there would ever be anything in his life again that he wouldn't have mixed feelings about.  He hated having mixed feelings. They were confusing.

Still, it was nice, sitting here with his childhood friend, remembering old times.  When they stayed out in the scrublands playing Secret Police and Thought Criminals for so long that they'd both been grounded for a week.  The time a portal had opened up outside of town letting Mongolian Sandworms into their desert and the Boy Scouts had decided to go ahead and have the Jamboree anyway - dozens of kids and Scoutmasters clinging to rocks and trying to climb cactuses, singing campfire songs over the inhuman screeches and churning of the sand.  Earl doing most of the work for their Subversive Radio Host merit badges before panicking at the last minute and shoving the hijacked microphone at Cecil.  Lying in their tent when they were twelve discussing with painful adolescent intensity their mutual crush on an older scout named Jim Nakamura - and what would _he_ look like now if he'd survived high school!  The time somebody - not one of them, although Jim had always blamed Cecil - had put a scorpion in Jim Nakamura's usual stall at the camp showers and he'd come running out, wet and naked, shouting, "Palmer!"

"Why did we ever lose touch?" Cecil asked, when he'd caught his breath from laughing.

Earl wanted to turn the question around on Cecil - ask him why, if they'd been so close at the start of high school, so close that it would be weird to date, like brothers - he'd let them drift completely apart during those four years, but Earl knew it was his fault too.  When he felt their friendship ebbing after Cecil left the scouts for the drama club, he hadn't done very much to stop it either.  So Earl just shrugged.

"Enough about the past," said Cecil, "Let's talk about now.  No one's ever returned from wherever it is that the strange mute children drag people off to.  If you'd be willing to give an interview, I'm sure my listeners would be very interested in hearing about where you were and how you got back."

Earl froze.  In the back of his mind was a gaping maw threatening to devour his consciousness, and he didn't remember, couldn't remember, wouldn't remember - but there was something about light and darkness and being swallowed and knowing too much things that are not meant to be known and it hurt -

Cecil noticed his distress and reached over to clasp his wrist.  His hand felt warm.

"Hey," Cecil said, " _If and when_ you want to talk about it, all right?  Sometimes we need to discuss things in the open, sometimes we just need to drink to forget, right?  Whichever.  It's OK."

Earl swam back to full consciousness.  "Right," he said, "Thanks Cecil."

"Great!" Cecil brightened and drew back. "So...um...when did you become a chef?"

Earl felt his still-tense muscles start to relax.  He was normally a man of few words, but he could always talk about cooking.

"I was taking classes at the culinary school before the Ceremony.  I should have finished in November, but the wheat disaster happened just a few weeks before my coursework ended, so we all had to go for an extra semester to learn to work around the ban.  We were doing some really interesting things with rice and barley flour and with corn meal.  I'm still experimenting with the ratios - I think I can mimic the taste better if I can find just the right combination of other grains.  And I didn't technically finish with that before Franklin and Barton earned their rank - I'm still so proud of them - but I was almost done, so after I returned the school agreed to give me my certificate if I came back and passed a few exams.  Which was really nice of them because you're not supposed to disappear for over a year between taking the classes and being tested on your knowledge.  I'm very lucky that they agreed to do that since my old job had been filled while I was gone and I couldn't have afforded to retake anything.  Then LaShawn Mason opened up his new restaurant and he needed people in the kitchen and I needed a job so - here I am."

"So you completed culinary school at the same time that you were working full-time _and_ volunteering to lead a Scout Troop?"

 "Yeah.  It didn't leave me much time for a personal life, but it didn't really feel like working all the time.  You know how much scouting means to me and working with the boys was so much fun - that was my free time.  And culinary school was just fascinating.  That you can so drastically change the way things taste just by applying heat, and how they'll taste different if you do that by frying or baking or boiling or broiling.  You can change the texture and the flavor so drastically before you even factor in other ingredients.  All these very simple factors can be combined in nearly infinite variations to create something just magical!  I mean, not literally magical - I have no respect for chefs that mix rituals with food preparation - but still, so incredible!  It never really felt like working."

"You sound like my Carlos.  When we first started dating, science was his whole world."

"Maybe I need to find someone who'll be willing to share me with cooking."

"Or better yet, someone who'll make you come home at a reasonable hour."  There was a pause, then Cecil's smile suddenly fell.

"I was sorry to hear about Carlos," Earl offered.

"He's not dead!" Cecil snapped.

"I know."

Cecil sighed and ran his fingers through his hair.

"I'm sorry, Earl, that wasn't aimed at you.  I'm just frustrated at the moment.  People keep sending me _flowers_ and _condolence cards_ and _baked goods_ like I'm the widow at a funeral!  And it's not that I don't appreciate the thought, but Carlos is fine!  He's safe where he is and still doing science and he calls me every night.  Nothing has _ended._   And of course I'd be happier if he were already back home where he belongs, but I'm still happy now.  I'm not even worried about him.  I'm really not.  Carlos has lived in this town for over two years and he's survived everything Night Vale can throw at him, from miniature armies to clouds of buzzing shadow energy to all-devouring sentient light - and he's saved the lives of countless townspeople from these and similar threats.  Night Vale should have more faith in him."

"It still must be sad to have to wait for him in the meantime," Earl said, watching Cecil's face carefully.

"A little," Cecil admitted, "But I know he'll figure this out, like he has everything else, and come home soon.  And he's worth waiting for."

Cecil's confident smile looked totally sincere.  Earl felt his heart sink.

"So how's Khoshekh?" he asked, forcing a smile.

Earl let his mind drift as Cecil babbled happily about his cat, letting his lilting voice become a backdrop for his thoughts.  Earl took a sip of wine, grimaced, and wondered again what he was doing there.  It's not like Cecil Palmer was the one star-crossed love of his life.  Sure, Earl still remembered - with a bit more emotion than Cecil apparently did - meeting again in college at Cecil's going-away party before he left for Europe, nearly grown-up now and no longer almost-brothers, and coming deliciously close to hooking up.  But it wasn't like he'd spent the intervening years - over a decade in fact - pining over him.  After all, the reason why they hadn't started dating back then was that Earl was already seeing someone else by the time Cecil finally got back.  And by the time that relationship had ended Cecil had found a boyfriend, and their timing had just never worked out.  It wasn't a tragedy. Earl usually never even thought about it.  But before the Eternal Scout Ceremony, he had been so certain that he wouldn't survive it, and his life was flashing before his eyes with all the things he'd done and left undone and all the things he'd now never do and he was looking at Cecil, maybe the last person he was going to see before he entered the tent that he didn't expect to ever leave, and it all made him feel so terribly sentimental.  But he had survived, and he had come back - so why was he sitting here across from Cecil Gershwin Palmer trying to make something happen between them that Cecil obviously didn't want?

Cecil moved on from talking about Khoshekh and started filling Earl in on all the major news events he'd missed during the last year.  Earl had heard about most of them already from other people, but it was nice listening to them again in Cecil's attractive voice, with that appealing eloquence of his, and watching him emphasize his points with graceful gestures that his radio listeners never got to see.  This got them through the rest of dinner, and they'd just put in their desert orders when Cecil's phone rang.  His face lit up in a way it definitely had not when he'd seen Earl waiting for him outside the cafe.

"I'm sorry, I have to take this.  It's Carlos."

 Cecil stood up and moved far enough away that he probably thought that Earl couldn't hear him, and if he were anyone else, he would have been right.  But Cecil had a clear and distinctive voice that carried over the quiet conversations of other diners, the clinking of cutlery, and the noise of the cars on the street.  Earl could still make out every word.

"Hi Carlos," said Cecil, and the new warmth and happiness in his voice hit Earl like a punch to the gut, "How was science today?"

Earl took another sip from his glass, but he still couldn't understand why anyone would want to drink wine straight when it was so much better reduced into a sauce.

"Oh, not too much," Cecil was saying, "New mandate from the secret police, the outgoing mayor gave another press conference - oh, and we actually felt an earthquake today!  Just a little tremor, but everyone definitely experienced it."

"I don't have the data."

"Well I tried to get a statement from your team, but they were so intrigued by the new development that they were running around waving clipboards at each other and blabbering unintelligibly.  You know how excitable they are.  I'll talk to Rochelle about it tomorrow when everyone's a bit calmer."

"I wish you were too."

" _Carlos_."  Earl wondered what the scientist had said to make Cecil blush like that.

"No, actually, I'm out at that little cafe off Ouroboros Road."

"No, I'm with Earl Harlan the scoutmaster.  He survived the Eternal Scout Ceremony after all!"

"Oh, that was years ago," said Cecil, with a dismissive gesture that he couldn't imagine Cecil applying to their close and meaningful childhood friendship, so he must have been responding to something like, _Didn't he have a thing for you?_ Earl drained his glass.  He'd been wrong before, he definitely missed whiskey more than beer.

Cecil glanced back at Earl's table.  "Yeah, I probably should," he said reluctantly.

"Would you?"

"Ten o'clock sounds perfect, I should be free as a bird by then."

"Yes, I will."

"I love you, too."  Earl dumped the rest of the bottle into his glass.  (Cecil actually enjoyed wine, so there wasn't very much left.)

"OK.  Bye, Carlos."

Cecil was practically glowing when he came back.

"Sorry about that.  He usually calls me later than this, but time doesn't always match up between there and Night Vale, so it's hard to accurately predict when the call will come through."

Earl nodded.  It was fine, this was fine, he would be all right as long as Cecil didn't say -

"Carlos says 'hi.' He's really glad I'm here talking to you instead of sitting home alone.  I think he worries about me."

Earl smiled in what he hoped was a convincing way.  He hadn't realized until he'd actually seen it how badly he wanted Cecil to light up like that for _him_ , to talk that way to _him,_ to have so much love in his eyes when he thought about _him._ And he would feel like less of an idiot if that stupid scientist had at least _pretended_ to be jealous instead of, apparently, encouraging Cecil to get back to his friendly dinner and promising to call back later so he wouldn't keep Earl waiting.

"What were we talking about before?" asked Cecil.

"I think there was some sort of drama with the mayoral campaign?"

"Oh, Earrrrrrrl," said Cecil, saying his name like he hadn't done since the days of playground gossip.

And the topic of the mayoral race and election got them all the way through dessert.

"Earl," said Cecil, when they'd split the check and were about to leave, "If anyone could have come back from the Eternal Scout Ceremony, I'm really glad it was you."

And Earl could tell that Cecil meant it, but not in the way Cecil would mean it when it was Carlos coming home.  Earl's return wasn't personal.

"We should do this again sometime," Cecil continued.

"Sure," said Earl.  _Never again._

And they parted ways.

 

* * *

 

Earl was walking home when he noticed the black car following behind him.  It had government plates, but was not identified as belonging to any specific agency.  Nonetheless, it exuded an air of vague menace.

Earl had not been expecting it; yet he was not surprised when the car passed him and pulled over, the rear passenger door opening for him.  It looked like the same car he had come to in the back of, dazed and confused, on his return from...wherever it was he had been.  Earl pushed the threatening memories back down deeper again as a man called, "Need a lift?" from the open door.  Looking in, Earl saw the same good-looking white guy in the sharp suit and sunglasses who had also been in the car with him when he regained consciousness - a man who, he now remembered, though he had not thought about it before, had given him a confused run down of the major events he had missed, making sure to include, between Old Woman Josie's disappearance and reappearance and an allusion to the fight with Strexcorp, Cecil's current relationship problems.  Earl hadn't thought much of it at the time, his head swirling with disorder and residual fear - but now, things began to click.  He got in the car.

"Were you following me?"

"We have more important things to do than tail prodigal Scoutmasters - unless there's a reason you ought to be watched," said the man in the sunglasses, voice full of menace, "But we saw you walking while we passed by on our...other duties.  Wanted to see how you were.  The Chinese believe that if you save a man's life, you're responsible for him, right?"

Earl doubted the man in the suit across from him was an expert in Chinese culture, but he didn't say that.  Instead, he leaned forward and asked,

"Cecil's scientist...He was looking into something you didn't want investigated, wasn't he.  What was it?"

There was heavy silence in the car and Earl thought for a moment that he had made his last mistake.  Then the man gave out a barking laugh.

"I always thought you were smarter than you look in that goody-two-shoes get up, Harlan."

He reached over, opened a compartment in the seat, and handed Earl a cold bottle of beer.  Victory Golden Monkey.  They knew his favorite.

"But the ban-"

"Sheriff's Secret Police don't monitor here.  Finish it before you get out of the car."

Earl took a bottle-opener out of his pocket.  "Don't know why I still carry this, but 'Always be prepared.'"

"Scout Law."

"Were you a scout?" asked Earl, but he could already tell that the man was not.

"My personal details are not important," he said, "As you've already guessed, we're here to talk about how things went with Cecil."

"As I'm sure you heard, _not well_ ," Earl answered.

"On the contrary, we feel that it went very well," the man said.  Earl wondered if he was speaking for himself or just repeating what was said through his earpiece.  "Cecil wants to see you again.  He had a wonderful time, and he doesn't see you as a threat to his current relationship."

"That's because I'm _not_ a threat to his current relationship."

"Don't sell yourself short, Earl.  Oh, if you asked him tomorrow to throw Carlos aside and take you instead, I'm sure he'd angrily refuse, but after a few more weeks of separation..." the man looked Earl up and down in a way that made him uncomfortable.  "You're a very good-looking man, Earl Harlan, and you and Cecil already have a connection.  And when all's said and done, Carlos is stuck there, and you're _right here._ "

"Even if you're right, what's your plan?  I seduce Cecil away and then the troublesome scientist suddenly decides that he's happy to stay trapped alone in an empty desert world?"

"There are other ways out of the desert to other places than Night Vale, and each of them is easier to find.  But he won't start looking for them unless he no longer has someone to come home to here."

"This Carlos...is he a good boyfriend?"

"He's an Outsider," the man said firmly, "He has no place in our town, or with our Cecil.  But you do Earl."

He took off his sunglasses so he could look Earl in the eye.

"You could still have something."

Earl sipped his beer to distract himself from the emotions mixing inside his body.  There was longing, regret, guilt, fear, reluctance, love...He remembered Cecil saying "I love you, too" into the phone, and what that had sounded like.

"I don't know," said Earl, "It's confusing.  Everything is confusing right now.  I have all these dark memories, swirling inside me.  I don't know where I was or how I got back.  I don't know if I can deal with both these things at once, even if...Cecil..."

He let his voice trail off.

"We could help you, with your memories," said the man sitting across from him, "We know exactly where you were."

"And how I got back?"

"And how we brought you back."

"And you'll tell me -"

"Everything you want to know," the man promised, "As long as you help us in return."

"Do you think knowing would stop the nightmares?"

"Only one way to find out."

Earl sat in silence, finishing off the rest of his beer.  Only when it was all gone did he finally say -

"All right.  I'll call Cecil tomorrow, see if he wants to get together again."

"Better make it the day after.  Don't want him getting suspicious.  I hear he's thinking of trying to get the bowling team back together, now that Josie and John Peters are back.  You could join them."

"Yeah," said Earl, "Yeah, that's a good idea."

"Pleasure doing business, Mr. Harlan."  The had pulled up outside Earl's apartment complex.

"Thank you," Earl said, handing the man back the empty beer bottle, "For everything."

 

* * *

 

That night Earl lay in bed with his thoughts.  He had no mixed emotions now, no confusion - everything was clear.  There was only resolve left, pure and strong.  He would see Cecil again, pretending to be just a friend; again and again, no matter how painful it was; as many times as he took to find out exactly how they had found him and plucked him out of wherever he was and brought him safe to Night Vale.

And then he would tell Cecil everything.  And they would use what he had learned to rescue Carlos.

"Always be prepared," wasn't the Scout Law, that was just the motto.  That was what a Scout _should do_.  The real Scout Law said what a Scout _is,_ and a Scout is many things.  But _loyal_ is near the top of the list.

And Earl would show the vague yet menacing government agency just what kind of Boy Scout he was.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I only meant this to be one chapter, but I'm continuing at the request of @LarissaFae, who really wanted to know what happened next. Go check out her stuff! Sorry if it seems a bit rough. I had trouble getting it to flow the way I wanted it to.

Cecil talked about Carlos. A lot. Sometimes he sounded like he did on their first not-actually-a-date, happy and calm and confident that his boyfriend would be home soon. Sometimes he was frustrated by Carlos’s preoccupation with scientific discovery and annoyed that his boyfriend wasn’t trying harder to come home right away. Sometimes he missed him so much that he almost despaired.

Earl wanted to do the best friend thing and be angry with the scientist for the way he treated Cecil, but Cecil wouldn’t like that - and since the vague yet menacing government agency would only help him so long as they thought there was a possibility he could supplant Carlos in Cecil’s affections, it was very important that Cecil stay happy with him. Besides, Earl knew what it was like to have a calling that got in the way of your personal life, so he couldn’t entirely blame Carlos. Instead, Earl took the advice of the man in the sunglasses, whom he now thought of as his “handler,” and tried to steer the conversation away from Cecil’s boyfriend whenever he could.

Still, Cecil talked about him enough in person and on the air that Earl felt like he was getting to know the scientist pretty well. And on the whole, Carlos did seem to be a good boyfriend. He didn’t always stay on the phone with Cecil for very long, but he did call often – it wasn’t his fault that with the way time matched up between here and the desert, Cecil often had to wait longer between calls than Carlos actually took to make them. And he seemed to love sharing what he was doing – all the things he was doing – with his boyfriend. Earl wasn’t sure, but he got the feeling that part of the reason he seemed so distracted was that he was rushing through his scientific investigations, trying to get everything that he felt needed doing done so that he could start concentrating on getting home as soon as possible.

Then one night, while Earl and Cecil were out bowling to help Cecil get back into shape for the bowling team – he was creaming Earl, but apparently still no match for Old Woman Josie – Carlos called.

It was the fourth time he’d called while Cecil was out with Earl, and Earl steeled himself to listen to one side of their conversation again. He was getting better at it, actually. It still hurt, to hear Cecil so loving with someone else, but not in the personal way that it had the first time. Earl thought that now he just wanted _someone_ to look at him and talk to him the way Cecil did with Carlos, and that was a different kind of longing, a different kind of jealousy. It was still a painful feeling, still lonely – but it didn’t have the same sting.

“Is something wrong?” Cecil was saying into the phone.

“Well, if you miss me so much, you could stop wasting your time on your other experiments and start looking for that door.”

“I’m sorry….No, you’re right, that was unfair. I know your science is important, it’s just that I miss you too. A lot.”

“Actually, I’m bowling with Earl again right now.”

“Very good friends. It’s nice.”

“I’m sure he’s looking forward to that too.”

“Let me ask him.”

Cecil took the phone away from his ear. “Earl, Carlos wants to talk to you. Is that OK?”

“Sure,” said Earl, reaching for Cecil’s phone. He wondered if, now that he really was starting to feel like just friends with Cecil, the scientist was finally going to warn him off.

“Hello?” Earl said into the phone.

“Hi, you’re Earl Harlan!” said the high voice Earl recognized from Cecil’s radio show – and despite Earl’s misgivings, Carlos sounded perfectly friendly.

“And you’re Carlos the Scientist.”

“It is so good to finally get to talk to you,” the scientist said, “Cecil has told me so much about you.”

“Not nearly as much as he’s told me about you, I’m sure.”

“Yeah, he does go on.” Carlos said, in that flattered-embarrassed-proud he used when Cecil was praising him on the radio.

“Was there any particular reason you wanted to talk to me?”

“I just want to know all of Cecil’s friends. You’re the only one I haven’t met yet. And since we can’t meet in person for the moment, I thought we could meet like this.”

“I’ve been wanting to meet you, too. We have a big Welcome Back party waiting for you at the restaurant.”

“Really? That’s so sweet!”

“There’s a lot of people in Night Vale who want to have you back,” said Earl, smiling at Cecil.

“I know, and I want to be back too. I wish I could predict when I will come home, but there’s all this important science to do here first! So much science.”

Then Earl, too, heard the brittle edge in Carlos’s voice that had made Cecil ask him what was wrong.

“How are you holding up?” Earl asked.

“Me? I’m fine! A scientist is always fine.”

But this time it sounded less like an assurance and more like a mantra. Earl took the phone away from his mouth for a minute.

“It’s your turn, Cecil.”

And as Cecil got up to bowl, under the noise of the lanes Earl said quietly, in the same soothing voice he used with the boys when he knew one of them had something on his mind,

“If there’s anything you want to talk about, you can. You don’t need to put on a brave face for me.”

“No, I’m fine, really it’s just-”

His voice broke a little. Earl waited in the silence, giving him time to decide.

“There aren’t any doors, you know,” Carlos finally said, “I didn’t really expect there to be, after they all disappeared at once, but the nomadic army’s been all over this desert since then and they all keep an eye out for me, but they haven’t seen one. There isn’t one. If I’m going to find a way back, I’m going to have to generate it myself. And I’ve always sort of known that, but I’m more certain now. I’ve been trying to learn as much as I can here, and I haven’t had much time and energy left to consider how I am eventually going to get home.

“But today I felt so homesick I put everything I’ve been investigating aside and really concentrated on building a way back to Night Vale. I worked on it all day. And…I got nowhere. Nothing worked the way I wanted it to, I didn’t get any of the reactions I was expecting. I didn’t think I was going to find my way home in a day but I thought I would see some signs of progress. This is going to be a lot harder than I thought. I’m just so frustrated and worried and upset, and the worst part is that I can’t even tell Cecil about it because I don’t want to make him worried.”

“You can tell Cecil anything,” Earl said, as the subject of their discussion watched his second ball roll towards the pins to pick up a difficult spare.

“No, not this. He’s taking the separation worse than I am. I can’t do anything to make it harder for him.”

Earl wanted to say that it might comfort Cecil to know that his boyfriend sometimes felt as worried and afraid as he did, but by then Cecil was back and Earl didn’t want him to hear him say that into the phone.

“You won’t tell him I said any of this, will you?” Carlos asked.

“If that’s what you want.”

“It is. I’m sorry to lay all this out on you. This isn’t why I wanted to talk to you. I really did just want to start getting to know you, now that you and Cecil are becoming so close.”

“It’s OK.”

“This wasn’t the best subject for an introductory conversation was it? I guess I really needed to talk to someone who wasn’t Cecil.”

“What about the other scientists?”

“You’re right, I can talk to them,” said Carlos, and he suddenly sounded a little happier, “And I really should be coordinating my experiments with them and sharing data more. I forgot that I have people working on this on the Night Vale side!”

“Yes, you do,” said Earl.

“This place I’m in is certainly weird. But Night Vale is even weirder, and in two years we’ve barely scratched the surface of it, scientifically speaking. It was probably a little arrogant of me to think that I could start designing experiments that would help me get home already. I just have to learn more about this place first.”

Earl was surprised at the speed with which Carlos seemed to brighten up. He reminded him a little of Cecil, whose moods changed so quickly.

“I should call the other scientists and see what advice they have,” Carlos went on, “There is such a thing as being too self-reliant. I think I’ll do that right after I finish talking to Cecil.”

“Do you want me to put him back on?”

“Yeah. But first, thanks again for listening to me talk. I’m really glad that you’re there for Cecil while I can’t be. You’ll keep looking after him for me until I get back?”

“Absolutely. I’ll see you soon. Here he is.”

Earl gave Cecil his phone back and walked over to pick up his bowling ball. He lingered setting up his shots to give them some privacy, but still only managed to knock down a lousy 7 pins. When he got back, Cecil was saying, “No, you hang up first!” into the phone. Maybe it was good that he and Cecil had never really made a go of it; Earl could be pretty affectionate in a relationship, but he had no stomach for being _that_ cute.

“So what did you and Carlos talk about?” Cecil asked, as he put his phone away.

“Not much,” said Earl, “I started to tell him about the Welcome Back, Carlos party LaShawn’s been planning, but he wanted to talk about the science he’s been doing.”

Cecil rolled his eyes.

“I love Carlos, but he needs to work on his priorities. Did he tell you he spent the entire day trying to articulate one of those weird winged-creature skeletons he keeps finding, like he couldn’t have brought the bones home and worked on that here?”

“Yeah,” said Earl, wondering when his life had become an unceasing web of lies, “Well, you knew what you were getting into when you started dating a scientist.”

“You’re very dedicated to your work, and volunteering, and you still managed to find time to come bowling with me.”

“That’s why it’s a travesty that I’m still single.”

“It really is.” Cecil looked him over critically. “You should try online dating. I bet you’d have a lot of people interested in your picture.”

“Maybe when things calm down at the restaurant and I have more time. Cecil, we’re kind of hogging the lane.”

“Oh, right,” said Cecil, and he got up to bowl again.

That night, as Earl walked home (he walked everywhere in Night Vale; he was used to long hikes with the Scouts) the government car started following him again. It only did that now when he’d done something especially good or bad that they wanted to talk to him about. When they were pleased with how things had gone with Cecil, the man in the sunglasses always gave him an illegal beer, like they were trying to condition him with food rewards. He didn’t think he would be getting one tonight.

“You comforted him,” the man in the sunglasses said when Earl got in the car, “He was in despair about his chances of getting back and you cheered him up.”

Earl had expected this and already prepared an answer.

“What do you think would have happened if Carlos had still been upset when I’d given the phone back? Cecil would have noticed, and asked him again what was wrong, and eventually he would have told Cecil everything he just told me. You don’t know Cecil – there’s nothing that could have brought him closer to Carlos than talking about their mutual worries about him getting home. Better I comfort him than Cecil does.”

“But now he’s more determined than ever to come back and has decided to seek help from the remaining scientists.”

“Yeah, mentioning the other scientists was a mistake,” Earl said, trying to sound genuinely regretful, “But I didn’t know he would react like that! Is he always like that? Going from scared of failure to brimming with confidence in seconds?”

“He does bounce back rather quickly from what we can tell,” the man in the sunglasses said, frowning. “That’s one of the things that makes him so annoying. He’s very difficult to discourage.”

“At least now you know that he's having trouble finding his way back,” Earl offered.

“As we expected. It is good to have confirmation.” He looked thoughtful.

“And at least Cecil’s starting to compare what it’s like being ignored by Carlos to what it might be like dating you.”

The man in the sunglasses was always doing that, interpreting every complaint Cecil made about Carlos or positive thing he said about Earl as a sign that he was just about to dump his errant scientist and throw himself into Earl’s waiting arms. Earl didn’t know if it was wishful thinking or if the man in the sunglasses didn’t know what friendship was, but he was grateful for it. Every time he went out with Cecil, he was frightened that they would notice that neither one of them was showing interest in anything more than friendship. If his handler’s misinterpretations kept Earl from being punished for his failure, he was grateful.

“If you ever get the chance to talk to Carlos again, Mr. Harlan, see that you do a better job,” the man in the sunglasses said menacingly.

But they let Earl out of the car when they pulled up in front of his apartment complex, so apparently they were letting him off with a warning this time. Earl felt shaky with relief as he watched the car drive away.

 

* * *

 

 

The vague, yet menacing, government agency was keeping its word about helping Earl recover his memories. Every so often – never on a schedule that Earl could learn and predict – he would come home from the restaurant or a Scout meeting and find the man in the sunglasses sitting at his kitchen table, sipping coffee that he had helped himself to from one of Earl’s mugs. Earl, never commenting on the fact that the man had let himself into Earl’s locked apartment and apparently rummaged around his kitchen until he’d found what he needed to make the coffee, always poured himself a second cup (the man always left extra in the pot) and sat down. Then they would start to talk.

Earl hated those nights. They were going slowly, probably to drag out each piece of information so that Earl wouldn’t learn everything until he’d already done what they wanted him to do – but he needed to go slowly, because each little scrap of memory recovered was a painful ordeal. The man in the sunglasses would say something like,

“When the mute children dragged you into the tent, they took you to the bottom of the hole out back of the Ralph’s. But the bottom was no longer there – there was only a swirling red mass that they pulled you through. Do you remember?”

“No,” Earl would say, because he didn’t, though hearing the words would fill him with an oddly familiar dread that made him feel sick.

Then the man in the sunglasses would add some small detail, like, “The portal smelled like oranges and copper.”

And suddenly Earl would remember, but it wasn’t just remembering, it was reliving. The kitchen would disappear and he would see and feel everything he did back then, until the sound of screaming brought him back. It was always himself that was screaming.

The man in the sunglasses was always gentler on these nights than he was when they met in the car to discuss Earl’s “mission” with Cecil, but no amount of asking if Earl was ready or getting him a glass of water and waiting until he stopped shaking could make what he was going through easier.

But Earl knew that he had to go through it, for his friend Cecil and for the man who loved him – and also, Earl was starting to realize, for himself. Because as horrible as it was to relive these little chunks of his experience, and as jumpy and fragile as he always felt for a few days afterwards, each memory he reclaimed did make the nightmares easier. He was no longer threatened by a darkness at the edge of his mind when someone asked him where he had been for the last year. Also, he thought that knowing how he got back the first time would help him survive the next Eternal Scout meeting if, years from now, one of the Cub Scouts in the troop they had him working with now earned the rank. Maybe if he could become strong enough to bear talking about it regularly, he could even tell the other Scoutmasters and troop parents what they should do if they should be dragged away during a ceremony.

Assuming, of course, that the vague yet menacing government agency let him live when he betrayed them and helped Carlos get home. He hoped that they would – hoped that his punishment would be terrible, but survivable, reeducation and torture – but he had severe doubts. He was prepared to be disappointed.

But he wasn’t always prepared for what happened in his mind when they discussed his missing year. The worst night happened several weeks after the man in the sunglasses had reprimanded him for reminding Carlos of the other scientists. He came home, like usual, to find the man in the sunglasses uninvited at his table. He sat, like usual; and they talked, like usual. But he didn’t know for several days afterwards what they had talked about. Whatever it was was so horrible that he had already blocked it from his mind again when he came to.

He was lying on the floor, twitching like he was having a seizure, and screaming – with the man in the sunglasses standing over him, a look of concern on his face. He managed to maneuver Earl back into his chair before Earl pushed him away roughly – he did not want to be touched. He sat there, shaking harder than he ever had before and rocking back and forth. He could hear himself mumbling something under his breath but he could not tell what it was. He was vaguely aware of the man in the sunglasses moving away from him, and this distressed him further because he did not want to be left alone – but he couldn’t seem to bring himself to do anything about it. But the man returned shortly and threw something soft around Earl’s shoulders that he would only recognize the next morning as the blanket that he usually left draped across the back of his couch. Then he sat down in Earl’s line of vision, but made no move to touch him again.

Earl had only vague memories of that night afterwards and no idea what was going on inside his mind, but he knew that the man in the sunglasses stayed with him for a long time, maybe hours. He didn’t say anything, he just sat there. At some point in the night, or maybe it was early morning by then, the man’s cell phone went off with a sharp ring that startled Earl and made him briefly cry out again. He would have vague memories of the man telling whoever was on the other end that he was still “with the subject,” and saying things like, “Yes, ma’am,” and “No, ma’am” in a placating tone.

The last thing Earl remembered with any clarity was the man crouching down in front of him.

“Mr. Harlan – Earl – I have to leave now. I’m going to call your boss and tell him that you won’t be at work today. You don’t have to get up, you don’t have to call in, you don’t have to do anything. Do you understand? Look at me.”

Earl looked, but he could only see his own reflection in the man’s lenses – a haunted-looking black man with distant eyes. The man with the sunglasses took them off for one of the very few times in Earl’s memory.

“Earl, I have to leave now, but I’m going to call you out at work so you don’t have to do anything. You can stay home today if you want to. Nod if you understand me.”

With phenomenal effort, Earl nodded.

Afterwards, he was always certain that he was still sitting at the kitchen table when the man left, so at some point Earl must have taken himself to bed, because his scattered memories included lying there between disjointed and terrible nightmares that he either couldn’t or wouldn’t remember. He must have passed the entire day like that.

It was dark again when he came back to himself and he wasn’t sure how much time had passed. He was still shaking, but his bodily needs were beginning to reassert themselves and he stumbled to the kitchen to make something to eat. He hadn’t seen or spoken to anyone, hadn’t even listened to Cecil’s show like he usually did, but he thought, after food and a night’s good rest, if he could get it, he would be ready to go back out into the world again. He would have to take himself to the Beatrix Lowman Memorial Meditation Zone, when he was ready, to process whatever memories he had unearthed the night before, and he wasn’t sure how many days this one would take – it was the worst he’d ever had. But he had a feeling that he was getting towards the end. He didn’t think there could be that much deeper to go. And then they would have to tell him, as promised, how they had brought him back. He reminded himself that he was doing this for a purpose, and that steadied his hand a little as he ate ravenously and drank enough water to make up for a day’s worth of neglect.

He didn’t feel ready to return to his troubled bed quite yet, so he walked into his living room so he could watch television until his nerves stopped jangling so loudly. When he turned on the light there he saw a plain manila envelope lying on the floor across the room. From where it was lying he guessed that it had been pushed underneath his door.

He crossed the room and picked it up, opening it cautiously. There was a typewritten note inside that was entirely nondescript but that somehow struck him as very official looking. It read:

> Mr. Earl Harlan,
> 
> A vague, yet menacing, government agency thanks you for your service, yet regrets to inform you that your contract with said agency is henceforth terminated. Carlos the scientist returned to Night Vale at 19:00 this afternoon. We leave you with our best wishes for the future and confidence in your future compliance with all government mandates.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> REDACTED

Earl dropped the note and began to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry, I feel so mean to Earl in this chapter, but I promise the third and final chapter will entirely be about making Earl Harlan happy.


	3. Chapter 3

It had been weeks (months, actually, but thankfully not too many of those) since Earl and Cecil’s first post-return conversation. Weeks of dinners and outings and other get-togethers with a deeply attractive man who was in love with someone else, weeks of pretending to try to court him for the benefit of the government agents that were monitoring them, weeks of conquering his stage fright to give regular cooking tips on the radio just to get closer to him, weeks of gradually and painfully learning to replace his unrequited romantic feelings for Cecil with the platonic affection of genuine friendship, weeks of horrifying and traumatic memory reclamation that made him relive nightmares – and all so he could learn enough to bring Cecil’s boyfriend back from the other desert. And in the end, Carlos had gotten home on his own, as Cecil had always known that he would.

Well, not entirely on his own. Carlos had had help. But not from Earl.

Earl tried not to feel useless as he walked home from Carlos’s “Welcome Back” party at _Tourniquet._ There were good things that had come out of his aborted mission, even if it hadn’t ended up being necessary for Carlos’s return. He was friends with Cecil again, as he had not been for many years, and that felt good. His nightmares weren’t as bad anymore now that he remembered most of what happened. And the vague yet menacing government agency, who wouldn’t have brought him back in the first place if they hadn’t wanted him to do this, had not moved against him in any way because they still thought he’d been following orders. Earl could continue to live his life now.

And it was a good life! He had a job he loved, a hobby he was passionate about, friends and family. He didn’t want to be the kind of guy who needed to be in a relationship to be happy. But tonight, watching Carlos and Cecil together made him suspect that he was exactly that kind of guy. And the thought was depressing.

Earl had managed to spend most of the party in the kitchen under the guise of making sure everything was perfect for his friends, but he couldn’t prevent feelings of bitter envy from mixing with his happiness during the brief times he did join the rest of the party. He wasn’t jealous anymore – he didn’t want to be with Cecil, or with Carlos – but he wanted what they had. The way they looked at each other, the way they smiled, the way they wouldn’t stop touching – not in a way that made anyone else uncomfortable, but little touches: hand on the back or the shoulder, brushing their arms together as they walked, moving their chairs close so they could sit with their knees just barely touching. Each time they shifted position, they made sure that somewhere they were maintaining physical contact, as if after so long apart, they each needed constant reassurance that the other person was still there. Carlos seemed to need this as much as Cecil did, which was good to see – that Cecil’s extraordinary love was so completely returned. He did genuinely feel good about that. He just wished that the emotion wasn’t mixing with anything else. He was so tired of confusion.

The party had been a hit, though. Everyone who was anyone in the town was there – Old Woman Josie and her non-existent angels, including one who talked suspiciously like old Marcus Vansten; John Peters, the farmer; scientists from both Carlos’s team and the Night Vale Community college faculty; even Mayor Cardinal! LaShawn Mason was thrilled at all the famous guests in his restaurant and took advantage of Earl’s diligence in the kitchen to spend less time cooking and more time schmoozing with the local celebrities whom he hoped would become regular patrons. And everyone had loved the food – even Cecil’s niece Janice had liked it, and it is not easy to get a 10-year-old to even try haute cuisine. (She had particularly liked the sudden awareness of the previously suppressed memory that followed the dessert course, which she had found interesting and enlightening.) Then Carlos had made a little speech thanking everyone for believing in him during his long absence and saying how happy he was to finally be back “where I really belong,” and they had called it a night – a little early, because, as Cecil explained, even though they had waited a few days to have the party to give him time to adjust, Carlos hadn’t quite gotten used to the time difference between Night Vale and the Other desert and needed to go to bed early. There were some suggestive snickers at this, but Earl thought that the scientist really did look sleepy.

LaShawn had sent him home immediately because he had done so much of the cooking – “Let the rest of us clean up; it was your friends’ party and you barely got to enjoy it!” – and since, as Carlos had told them, the sun was setting a few hours late today (“Later than it’s ever been before, I should investigate that if it happens again tomorrow”) the sun was still hovering above the horizon when Earl reached his apartment complex. There was an unfamiliar man in a t-shirt and jeans sitting on the front stoop and as Earl shifted over to avoid him, something about him made him take a second look. Then Earl realized who he was and he froze.

He looked very different without the sharp suit and the sunglasses – that must be why Earl hadn’t recognized him until he was too close to run. His first thought was that the unnamed government agency had somehow finally learned that he’d been planning to betray them and was here to punish him, but he dismissed that thought as he didn’t think they’d send one of their agents to correct him wearing such casual clothing. His second thought was that the man had stayed with him a long time the last time they’d unearthed a memory together, long enough that his bosses had called looking for him, and maybe he’d gotten in trouble for that, maybe he wanted revenge…

Earl swallowed.

“I didn’t think I’d be seeing you again,” Earl said carefully.

“You won’t, not in an official capacity,” he said easily, not getting up from his seat on the steps, “I’m here on my own time.”

He didn’t seem angry, so Earl cautiously sat down on the same step, but against the opposite railing, keeping space between them.

“Tonight was Carlos’s return party,” the man who was usually in sunglasses said, “That must have been rough.”

“Are your people going to hurt him, now that he’s back?”

“That’s above my pay grade. But I don’t think so. We don’t like to make trouble with the local population, and Carlos is a bit of a town celebrity. I doubt we’d have bothered with you if my bosses had felt comfortable moving against him directly before, and now that he’s friends with the mayor…”

“Good,” Earl said, and at the man’s raised eyebrow he continued, “He makes Cecil happy.”

“Still, it must be rough, seeing them together.”

“It’s not as easy as I’d like,” Earl admitted, “But I’m glad being Cecil’s friend won’t include comforting him about Carlos’s absence anymore. Some of those early times together when he was in despair and I had to console him…those were the hard times. It’s one thing to know someone you want would rather be with someone else, but to actually encourage that other relationship – you have no idea how hard that is.”

“Actually, I know exactly what that’s like.”

Earl looked at him.

“Universal human experience. Unrequited love.” He looked out at the setting sun.

“Right,” said Earl, “Is this what you came all the way out here to talk to me about?”

“No, no. Listen, I feel kind of bad about dropping things where they are. It’s not your fault that the scientist got home before you were able to lure his boyfriend away, and I hate leaving a job unfinished. It gets on my nerves, you know? So I asked my superiors if what happened to you and how you got back was actually a secret, and they said no, now that they’re not holding the information over your head to get you to spend time with Cecil anymore, there’s no reason to keep it hushed up and if I wanted to tell you about it, that would be fine as long as I did it on my own time, so…I wanted to know if you’re still interested in finding everything out.”

Earl was definitely still interested. He wanted to know for his own sake, and he wanted to use the information to help everyone else avoid the dangers of Scout Ceremonies. But the memories were…difficult. He definitely didn’t want to talk about them tonight, not so soon after that last one had nearly wrecked him. He wasn’t sure what to say. To play for time, he noted,

“You seem different now.”

“You mean, no more _Remember we are always watching, Mr. Harlan_ ,” and with those last few words, his whole demeanor changed. His posture stiffened and his voice went tight, his face went blank as if assuming a mask, and Earl could almost see virtual sunglasses descend on him. Then he shrugged and relaxed back to the way he’d been before, casual slouch against the higher step, expression open and easy.

“I’m off-duty,” he explained, “No need to be menacing.”

And Earl thought he knew why the man next to him had previously worn sunglasses all the time, even when they met in Earl’s lit kitchen. With his whole face visible in the setting sun, his portrayal of “threatening government agent” seemed a bit worn around the edges, more like an actor playing a Bond villain than someone with real cruelty brewing just beneath their surface.

“I would really like to know what happened to me,” Earl said at last, “And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the offer. It means a lot to know that you’d take your own time to talk to me. But I don’t know if I can tonight. So soon after the last time, I don’t know if I’d make it. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean tonight!” the man said quickly, “I don’t know if I’d be up for it so soon, and all I have to do is watch you freak out. I just meant for the future. If you’re interested, I could call you to set up a time. Your number’s in your file. If not-”

“No, I’m interested,” said Earl quickly, “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

He shrugged again. “It’s not as big a deal for me as it is for you.”

“Yeah, but I can’t imagine you get much time off.”

“Well, like I said, I hate to leave a job unfinished,” he replied, “And you’re in for the worst of it, with the information bothering you like it does, on top of having to see Cecil and Carlos together. It’s a shame he couldn’t have been stuck there just a little longer.”

Earl looked at the man sitting next to him.

“Are your people listening in right now?”

“Well, we’re definitely not surveilling you anymore. I don’t _think_ we’re watching me, but I wouldn’t know about it if we were. The Sherriff’s Secret Police are probably listening, though.”

He looked at Earl curiously. Earl hedged his bets. He thought about all the things the man had said that implied a rather tense relationship with the Secret Police, and doubted that the two agencies shared information without being asked. He felt like the man who usually wore the sunglasses deserved to know before Earl took advantage of his generous offer, thought about the chances of him telling, but mostly he was just so sick of lying to everyone all the time that he finally said,

“I was never planning on stealing Cecil away from Carlos. I was going to stick it out until you told me how I was rescued, then I was going to get Carlos back the same way.” It felt good to finally say that to someone.

The man who usually wore sunglasses stared.

“He makes Cecil happy,” Earl explained.

The other man gave a half-frightened laugh.

“You would have…don’t tell anyone else about that. I’ll be in even more trouble than you if my superiors find out what you were planning.”

“I kind of figured that,” said Earl, “Wouldn’t have told you otherwise.”

“Earl Harlan,” the man mused, slowly shaking his head. He didn’t seem upset at Earl’s intended betrayal. If anything, he seemed…a little impressed.

“I’d understand if you want to rescind the offer,” Earl said, “That’s why I wanted you to know.”

“No, I don’t think I do,” he replied, “That’s…quite a sacrifice you were willing to make for your friend.”

Earl shrugged. The man who usually wore sunglasses smiled, but not the thin, tight-lipped smile he’d sometimes made when he saw Earl on the clock. This was a warm, careless smile that was actually kind of cute. Then he got to his feet.

“Well, I’ll call you later about arranging a time to go over the final few memories. I should probably get going,” he said, and Earl wondered if he was imagining the slight reluctance in his tone. He also wondered if there was perhaps an unspoken reason why the man had waited for him outside his building tonight, and stayed with him so long a few nights ago, and always found it so easy to believe that Cecil would be falling in love with Earl any second now.

“I suppose you have other plans, this being your night off,” Earl said.

“Just some household chores, nothing that can’t wait. Was there something else you wanted?”

“Coffee?” Earl gestured down the street towards the neon lights from the Midnight All-Night Diner.

The other man’s face lit up like a pale imitation of Cecil seeing Carlos.

“OK! Yeah, that sounds good.”

Earl started walking towards the diner. His companion fell in step beside him.

“My name’s Jeremy, by the way.”

Earl grinned.

“It’s nice to meet you, Jeremy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I brought Carlos back without Earl's help, but that was the only way I could think of that would let me end the story without him getting killed by the vague yet menacing government agency, even if that does take away some of his agency over the plot.
> 
> This chapter and the last one were supposed to be one chapter, but I decided to split it up so that I could get this bit up quickly. The last part will be a bit of an epilogue and I will try to finish it before the next new episode.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who commented encouraging me to finish it; you guys are awesome!


	4. Three Months Later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to everyone who waited so long for this.

Earl had not intended for double-dates with Cecil and Carlos to become a regular thing. But Cecil had found out from his “sources” (what Cecil called his network of incorrigible Night Vale gossips, of which he was the worst) that Earl had been seen around town with “a slim, handsome man with ginger hair” (“It’s more reddish-brown, actually”) just after their second date and had immediately called Earl up wanting to meet him. Earl hadn’t been prepared to tell Cecil about Jeremy so soon, and while he managed to come up with a plausible explanation for how they met (“Oh, online dating, like you said.”), he couldn’t think of a way to explain why introducing them would be awkward without telling Cecil a whole lot of other things that he preferred Cecil to go on not knowing. So they’d all gone bowling. And it had actually been pretty fun and not as awkward as he’d feared. Then Cecil and Carlos had invited the two of them over for dinner, and Earl felt it would only be polite to reciprocate with an invitation of his own, and before he knew it…it was a regular thing.

So he was friends with both Cecil and Carlos now, and that was new. There was a lot that was new in Earl’s life since he’d found Jeremy sitting on the steps outside his building three months ago. He had a new relationship that was going well, he had a closer friendship with Cecil than ever before, he had a new friendship with Carlos, he had thirty slides of a Power Point presentation on how to survive and return from being dragged away by strange mute children during a Scout ceremony and all the knowledge he would need to complete it in time to share with the Scout leaders and parents before the next rank ceremony, and he had a license from the Sheriff’s Secret Police to try homebrewing. (He wasn’t sure if his reputation as a Scoutmaster and upstanding member of the community made them confident that he wouldn’t try to smuggle wheat into his recipe or if Jeremy had pulled strings.)

He’d bought a fermenter online, but decided to ask Carlos if he could borrow a light chemical sanitizer, plastic tubing for siphoning, and an induction cooler from the lab (a Scout is thrifty), and Carlos had been interested in helping, so the brewing became another group activity. Now, weeks after he’d started, Carlos and Cecil were over to help with the bottling – even though he told them it was the most boring step and they might as well just wait a couple more weeks until they could actually taste it. But they’d insisted on coming to help with that too, which gave him an excuse to invite Jeremy. So the four of them made an assembly line in Earl’s tiny kitchen, siphoning the beer into bottles, capping them, and placing them in an old cooler for storage.

“Have you two been to the White Sands ice cream parlor since it reopened?” Cecil asked, as he passed a capped bottle to Jeremy.

“Not yet,” he replied.

“They redecorated the inside,” said Carlos, “It’s very nice.”

“We looked for you at street fair this weekend,” said Cecil.

“We couldn’t make it,” said Earl.

“What have you two been up to since we saw you last?” Carlos asked.

“Actually, that was the last time we saw each other too,” said Jeremy.

“Really?” asked Cecil.

“Well, I have the Scouts, and we both work long hours, so we don’t get as much free time as we’d like,” Earl explained.

“You know, Jeremy, I don’t think you’ve mentioned what it is you do?” asked Carlos.

Earl glanced up as Jeremy stiffened.

“ _What I do for a living is not important_ ,” he said darkly. His face was blank again.

“Oh,” said Cecil, “You know, sometimes I think that we don’t give enough credit to people whose jobs are _unimportant_. Every profession contributes in its own way to making Night Vale the wonderful little town that it is, even if those contributions are small, or _vague_ , or go so unnoticed that they may as well be _secret_. When you think about it, unimportant jobs may be the most important jobs of all.”

They looked at each other, and the man who was not wearing sunglasses nodded once. Then he relaxed into Jeremy again, bending down to place another bottle in the cooler as he asked Carlos about how they’d liked the street fair. Cecil caught Earl’s eye over Jeremy’s shoulder and mouthed the word, “ _Hot!”_ rasing his eyebrows in an approving _go Earl_ kind of look. Earl snorted. Cecil would be impressed that Earl was dating a menacing authority figure, even though those were exactly the people who took him in for reeducation so often. Earl definitely did not think that the man in the sunglasses was hot. That guy was abrasive and threatening and actually kind of annoying. Jeremy, on the other hand, the man who took off the sunglasses, who stood with a casual slouch, and had an easy smile that always brightened just a little when he looked at Earl, who laughed like a seal, and remembered the name of every Cub Scout Earl told him a story about, and who was naturally so warm and sweet that he always had to try a little too hard when his job demanded that he be cold and ominous…that guy was turning out to be an entirely different story.

Though it occurred to Earl that, what with the highly limited time they had to spend together at all and, until recently, the nights they’d had to spend reclaiming the last of Earl’s repressed memories instead of dating, and the dates that they spent with Cecil and Carlos, he hadn’t found an appropriate time to express this to Jeremy yet.

“Well, that’s the last of them,” said Earl, as he siphoned off the last bit of beer above the dregs.

“How long do we have to wait before we can drink them?” asked Cecil.

“At least two weeks,” said Earl, “We’ll have a tasting party.”

“Dave at the lab gave me his schnitzel recipe a few weeks ago,” said Carlos, “We could bring that.”

“Sounds good.”

“We’ll see you then!” said Cecil, “Text me with a date and time later.”

“Will do.”

As they said goodbye to Cecil and Carlos, Jeremy asked if Earl needed a hand cleaning up.

“It’s gonna smell,” Earl warned.

Jeremy just shrugged. Earl smiled wide.

When they finished cleaning up the kitchen and washing out the fermenter (which did, indeed, stink) Earl observed that it was getting pretty late. Jeremy glanced reluctantly at his jacket hanging by the door.

“I guess so,” he said.

“You could stay, if you want.” They had not done that yet.

For a moment, Jeremy’s whole face lit up. Then he held up his damp hands.

“I smell like stale hops!” He sounded so offended that Earl had picked _now_.

Earl, who smelled like garlic and bug spray more or less perpetually, only laughed and kissed him.

Jeremy stayed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have this strong premonition that tomorrow's episode is going to make this story explicitly non-canon, so I finished it in a rush tonight so I could get it up before then. Sorry if the ending feels a bit rushed.


End file.
